Jade Star (Tanager Book 1)

by Cedar Sanderson

  I sat and looked at my plate, feeling a little awkward as they only had cups in front of them. Compromise was to lift the cup and take a sip. I could feel my eyes widen with my surprise. “Coffee!”

  Theo laughed. “Not quite. But I’m delighted to hear we’ve come close.”

  “Well, I could easily believe you grew it here.” I looked around at the garden. “It’s delicious, however you managed it.”

  “Oh, we do grow a lot.” Yvette assured me. “The planet isn’t ready for cultivation. When we started out, this was all…” She waved her hands over her head, “bare and empty. I knew we wanted to have a garden, and it made sense to make the space serve more than one purpose.”

  “I wasn’t sure about it at first.” Theo admitted, smiling fondly at his wife. “But she has made me a convert. It is a home, and one I am grateful for.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked, curious. I was remembering the long years spent making a hollowed-out rock into a home.

  “Thirty-six years ago I brought my bride home.” Theo put his big hand over hers, and she blushed like the girl she must have been.

  I remembered how it felt to be touched, and perhaps some of my loss showed on my face, but I simply said. “It is very beautiful.”

  Theo glanced at his wrist. “I am going to take my leave. Time to go supervise.”

  Yvette looked after him fondly. “And I,” She turned back to me, “am going to suggest you eat. I will also go supervise my domain.” She chuckled.

  “Thank you.” I looked at my plate. “It looks delicious.”

  I’d been presented with an omelette. When I cut into it, I could see cheese and herbs. I’d just taken a bite when I felt the warmth and fur of a small animal pressing against my legs. “If you’re begging,” I informed the cat, “you’ll have to be more persuasive than that.”

  I wasn’t surprised to see him. He sat, curling the long tail around his paws like a scarf and blinking the big golden eyes at me. I relented. He accepted the bit of cheese delicately and then licked his black lips with a long pink tongue.

  “Such a fancy man.” I told him. “Pretty gentleman in his fur coat.”

  Redea’s giggle brought my head up. “What, don’t you talk to your kitten?”

  She nodded her head vigorously enough to make her braids bounce. “Yes. But she’s not a gentleman.”

  “Oh.” I looked at the cat. She looked back and then lifted a paw to clean her face. “Do you know her name?”

  Redea shrugged. “My kitten is Thomas. I don’t know all the cats.”

  I finished eating. Redea flitted in and out of the garden paths, collecting flowers. I could see another flower crown was in my future. “Are you ready?” I called when I was done.

  She came running with a half-finished crown in her hand. “Where do I put the plate?” I asked her.

  Yvette appeared on cue. “I heard you are giving a command performance. I will take the plate.” She whisked it away, and Redea took my hand, leading me to the big clearing. There were several children waiting, and I sat on the grass. They followed my cue. I looked around, and realized that the cat had followed us. She came and curled up on the grass, her eyes alertly on me, just like the children. I took a breath and began to recite a story I’d told my own children, and grandchildren.

  “Hear and attend and listen, for this was when the tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild--as wild as wild could be--and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.”

  The singsong rhythm of Kipling’s tale, old when I was a girlchild, came easy to me and the only movement in front of me was when another person joined us. It wasn’t very long before my audience had doubled, and not all were the young’uns.

  I came near the end, and smoothed the cat’s ears with my fingers. Startled, I looked down and wondered when she had come to be in my lap. Someone in the audience giggled, and I looked up with a smile and finished the story.

  There was a small silence, then one little boy jumped up and ran into the garden, yelling, “I’m a Wild Thing!”

  The spell was broken, and the children were in motion. I sat on the grass smiling at the adults who were still seated.

  “I remember that story.” One of the olders said. “But you used different words.”

  I nodded. “I was keeping the spirit, but a language they would understand.”

  Two of the women looked at each other. “You are so young…” the first one who had spoken.

  “I’m older than I look.” I interrupted her.

  “You’re very good with children.”

  I relaxed a little. They weren’t going to ask just how much older. “They remind me that I loved stories at their age.” Which was truth.

  A movement caught my eye, and I looked up to see Marsh walking into the Glade. Grateful for the reprive, I stood up. “Ladies, I must go see to my ship.”

  They stayed there, chatting, while I went to meet the young man. He was beaming, and I caught a little of that joy myself. It was magnified by feeling the happiest I had been in some time.

  “I think she’s all fixed.” He told me.

  I fell into step beside him as he turned back for the outer corridors.

  He kept talking, “Da wanted you to be the one to test the engines. He also said to tell you he’d fixed the autodoc.”

  I almost missed a step, but Marsh, bubbling with youthful enthusiasm, was now telling me about the capabilities of my own ship. The significance of his father’s message – and I had not expected Theo to look that far, or for that matter to see what I’d done…

  “Why doesn’t your ship have a name?” Marsh’s question broke me from my thoughts.

  “She has a number?” I answered, forcing my smile. “We haven’t been together long enough for me to learn her name.”

  He gave me a wide-eyed look, then narrowed his eyes. “You’re teasing. I thought they were named in the yards where they were built.”

  I shrugged. “”Most are.”

  “You should name her.”

  Ah, the very young. So very… “Persistent.” I spoke aloud.

  “What?”

  “I shall call her Persistent.” I told him. “She kept going even though everything was offline. A ship’s death, like, and still she flew.”

  Chapter 11: The Cold Wild Lone

  The newly-named Persistent lived up to her name, running through the engine tests sweetly. Theo stayed in the maintenance compartment with a short-range comm, calling out to me what to try next. Marsh lay on his back next to my chair with a tool, testing cables there.

  “Not too much, nor too little, just right,” he told me. He was chattering at me, which was fine. I had long experience at listening while working. “This cable’s good.”

  Theo’s voice in my earbud called out. “Left engine.”

  I repeated that out loud for Marsh, he let the tester fall to his chest, not needed for this, the controls were already tested. He kept talking. “I’d love to fly a ship like this, but I don’t really want to leave Pythias.”

  “Oh?” I was only half listening to me, the other half of my attention focused on the pitch of the engine. It sounded right, no warbling, just a steady rising note.

  “Left is solid.” Theo’s voice sounded pleased. “Go to right.”

  Marsh, once I’d repeated that, explained. “Well, you see… did you meet Marja?”

  I chuckled, “I saw you at dinner, I think.” I remembered the pretty girl.

  “She’s from the other terraformer. They sent her for cooking classes.”

  “Your mother is a wonderful cook,” I commented, listening to the other engine’s tune. A stray thought that the young couple were probably deftly set up by loving sets of parents ran through my brain.

  “We’re going to have a baby.” Marsh�
��s voice was low, almost reverent. Startled, I looked down at him. After a second to untangle the engines, his mother, and the young Marja, I spoke.

  “Congratulations!”

  He beamed up at me. “I think if it’s a girl, I want to name her Jade.”

  “Um.” My thoughts on that were interrupted by his father’s voice.

  “Shut her down, she’s running pretty.”

  I started shut down. “Marsh, you realize Marja might have something to say about that.”

  “She thought it sounded exotic, and you’re beautiful.” He assured me, scrambling to his feet. “But she wanted to know what you thought for a boy’s name.”

  I looked at him, flummoxed. He shrugged, a little smile on his face. “She’s too shy to talk to you.”

  It took me a moment. “Walter.” I said, drawing the name out. I’d probably never say it out loud again. He’d been the guiding star of a life I was quite literally dead to. “He was a good man.”

  Theo stuck his head into the compartment, a broad smile on his face. “She’s sweet as honey!”

  I smiled back at him, “Yes, she is.”

  Marsh looked down at me. “Will you stay for another day or so?”

  I was tempted. I liked Theo and Yvette and these people… I could stay here. Become the teacher again, as I had been before. That thought was chased through my head by the other one, the one with teeth, and raging claws of doubt. I was no longer human. I didn’t know what I was. I had destroyed a world. I could not risk bringing destruction to this one again. I had already played dice with their lives and it was mere luck I’d rolled a twenty. It might not happen again.

  I shook my head. “I have to go.”

  Theo said, “At least stay for dinner.”

  “Ship’s time is flexible, I told him with a smile. “I’d be delighted.”

  “We’ll be putting suppli…” Marsh broke off with a guilty look at his father.

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  Theo chuckled. “It was supposed to be a surprise, but yes. We are going to stock your pantry, as it were. Yvette was a little appalled at the food supplies you had.”

  I shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  “Then let us spoil you a little.” Theo’s smile was gentle and his eyes serious. I knew he’d decided the autodoc, with its obvious sabotage, had been a suicide attempt. I couldn’t really disabuse him of that notion.

  I also hadn’t brought up payment again, but I stood now and told them I had to get a few things from my cabin. They hadn’t gone in there, at least, to see that I only had one more change of clothes. Another reason not to stay – explaining how I’d gotten the ship would have been awkward, and it would have come up eventually. From the cabin I went to the ship’s vault. Many small ships have a special safe, but this one had a peculiarity. I’d decided when I found it that the ship had been purposefully designed to be a smuggler. But the Almeida Stones were as secure as I could make them, and didn’t take up all of the space. I chose one of the largest and finest, and tucked it into my vest over my heart to keep it warm.

  And then I walked with my new friends back to their home, feeling like a stranger more than I had from the time I’d met them. I was pulling away. Like the cat, I would walk alone. I wondered what lay in my future, and then I wondered just how long that future would be. I couldn’t die. I had been fairly sure of that when the hive intelligence of Termine tried to brainjack me with a crude hole in my skull. I’d proven it when I crawled into an autodoc and blew the power with a remote detonation, even as tiny as it was – just enough to cut all power.

  I couldn’t determine it for sure, but I’d programmed it to last a whole five minutes, that lack of power to the whole ship save the reactor. I’d gambled that not even the hivemind could breach a reactor with impunity, and I’d been right. I’d also been dead. But my little friends had done something to me. I wondered if they even realized what they’d done. Did they wander through the galaxy making other humans into something like me?

  The only thing I could do was to go looking. Either for the fuzzy aliens or for the not-humans. I couldn’t stay here, in this pocket paradise. I smiled and hugged Yvette, but my mind was already reaching for the stars.

  The afternoon was pleasant. I made an effort to be there, with them, and not lost in my thoughts. Redea had finished another flower crown – I didn’t know who she’d given the first one to, until I saw Marja at the evening meal. It was a little wilted, but I smiled at her and she smiled back, radiant.

  I had told another story – the Elephant’s Child, always a favorite – and whiled the afternoon with the big smoke-colored cat in my lap again.

  “She likes you.” Yvette commented.

  “Does she have a name?” I asked, I was leaning against a tree and trying not to fall asleep with the cat purring.

  Yvette shrugged. “There are so many.”

  Which was what Redea had said as well. I may have napped, because I opened my eyes again to twilight, and Redea trying to coax the cat into wearing a tiny version of my crown.

  “Cats are wild things.” I reminded her.

  “My kitten will.” She sounded put out.

  I laughed a little. “Kittens are young things. They remember they are wild when they grow up.”

  A bell sounded, somewhere else in the Glade. Redea jumped up. “Dinner time!”

  I followed her again, the cat having left in a huff over the flowers. Once again, Yvette’s students had outdone themselves. I had learned, and only took small portions, enjoying the flavors but not over-indulging. I still had to fly tonight.

  We were finishing the dessert course when I reached into my vest and pulled out the stone. In the deepening darkness of the Glade, with the twinkling lights over the table, the stone flashed with brilliance, pleasing me. I’d fed it with my body heat, and it repaid me with a good show. Yvette gasped, and I held it out to her. She took it gingerly, like it might burn her.

  Theo murmured something inaudible, looking from the stone to me and back again.

  “Yvette, this is for you.” I told her quietly. “A small token of my gratitude for your hospitality.”

  “It’s lovely! What is it?” She couldn’t take her eyes off it, moving it around from hand to hand to see the colors change.

  “An Almeida Stone.” Her husband said, very softly. “A very large Almeida Stone.”

  His eyes met mine over her bent head, and I smiled. We both knew I’d just handed his wife enough to buy they whole damn planet, and there was nothing he could do about it. He shook his head slowly and smiled.

  “It can be cut for jewelry,” I told Yvette. “And it will only glow like this if it is worn – it uses the body heat of the wearer for luminesce.”

  She looked up at me, smiling like a child with a candy. “I shall wear it always, then. What a thoughtful gift, Jade!”

  “You have been very good to me.” I told her. She put the stone down and held out her hands. I took them in mine and we looked at one another for a moment. We had a connection I doubted she understood, because I no longer looked like I had been in her role a generation ago, the matriarch to a growing clan.

  “You must come back for visits.”

  “I shall try.” I knew I would never return. This place would be a temptation. I’d preserve it in memory, and not sully that by coming back to it.

  “Must you go so soon?” She was wistful. Visitors were rare here, I knew.

  “I must. I… have some urgency in my mission.” I’d been vague about what that was. Better fewer details than too many, then forget what I’d said.

  Farewells were brief, and I found myself again with Marsh and Theo as my escort back to the Persistent. Theo gave me a look. I shrugged. “I don’t have access to credits, here.”

  “But you had that?” He was still a little boggled over what I’d handed his wife so casually, I could tell.

  “I was a prospector in another life.” I told him, knowing it was probably too much, but i
t was also not the full truth.

  “Yet you fly alone among the stars.”

  “Not all of us long for the green hills of home.” I felt my throat tighten. “The stars are my home. Up there, I’m free.”

  “But the stone…”

  I stopped and looked at him. Marsh, who was ahead of us, kept going and I kept my voice low. “You’re dependent on a company, for supplies, for everything. If they fail? If they decide terraforming is a boondoggle? Will they bother transporting your clan? Will they care about the Glade you’ve grown here?”

  His face a little drawn, Theo looked over my shoulder at his son’s back. I wondered if he knew about his prospective grandchild. “It has been a worry.”

  “And now, it is not.” I started to walk again.

  He walked with me silently.

  On the ramp, he paused again. “Jade…”

  I stopped in the hatch and looked at him. He shook his head. “Will you be all right?”

  I nodded. “It was necessary, with the ship dead…”

  I didn’t want to try and explain the whole desperate plan. He assumed, as I had meant him to, that I’d tried to kill myself rather than suffocate on a Dutchman. Looking relieved, he followed me into my ship.

  Marsh, ever the happy puppy, pounced on me and led me to the tiny galley to show me what his mother had managed to pack into stores. I felt the engines quiver into life, and knew that Theo was warming them up for me. He’d picked up on my need to go. I walked with the two of them to the hatch, and impulsively hugged Marsh.

  “Thank you, both of you.” I held my hands out to Theo for a more sedate farewell, but he pulled me into his arms and hugged me tight.

  “You’re never alone, out there.” He told me, speaking into my hair. “You have a family here.”

  And then they were gone, which was just as well, because I was crying while I closed the hatch and started the ramp retracting. I managed to stop that nonsense by the time I had checked that all was secure and returned to the bridge. ‘Twouldn’t do to blubber all over my board. I sat down and let my fingers tell the Persistent she was free to loose the bonds of gravity.

  I swung her ‘round, a few feet above the hangar floor, and saw that they were opening the vast doors for me. I took her through them slowly, and into the remnants of the storm.